Moments at the Cross
Rom 11:27, 1 John 1:9, 1 Cor 13:5, Col 3:13, Rom 8:32, John 14:1-3
April 8, 2003
I. In the last few weeks I have taken us to the Cross several times to look at the different articles that are have something to do with Jesus’ death.
A. We have looked at the spit of soldiers that was on Jesus’ face, and the crown of thorns that was on his head. We have seen the blood and water that wet the ground at the foot of the cross.
B. We have looked at the sign that was hung above Jesus’ head, and the list of our sin that was nailed to the Cross with Jesus, and the choice that we have to make about where we will spend eternity.
C. We have talked about the road that Jesus walked to the Cross, and His robe of purity that the soldiers gambled for, but that he gave us.
D. We have talked about a the sponge that was raised to wet his throat, and the work that he did for us because we get on his team, and the His grave clothes that turn tragedy into victory.
E. And, now I want us to go to the Cross one more time. This time the hill is quiet, it is not still but it is quiet. For the first time this day there is no noise.
F. The noise faded when the strange midday darkness fell. Suddenly there were no more taunts, and no more jokes, and no more mockers.
G. When the darkness came the onlookers turned nervously and began the trip down the hill.
H. But lets say that we didn’t go with them, because we came to learn. We are still there on the hill and in the quiet that came we can now hear the cursing of the soldiers, and the crying of the women.
I. But most of all we hear the sounds of three dying men as they groan, and roll their heads and struggle to breath. And as the groans fade away the three men seem dead.
J. If it were not for the sound of the labored attempts to breath you would think they were dead.
K. And, then the scream pierced the silence. It was as if someone had yanked his hair, and his head slams back, against the sign that hung above him, and His scream cuts the dark.
L. Standing as straight as he can on the nails that hold Him on the Cross Jesus screams like a lost child looking for his parents. Eloi! My God! Why have you forsaken me!
M. The soldiers stare. The women stop their crying. One of the Pharisees joked He’s calling Elijah, but nobody laughed.
N. He shouted a question to heaven and with the scene before us you would almost expect heaven to answer, and maybe it did because his face softened and he said IT IS FINSIHED! Father into your hands I commit my spirit.
O. As Jesus took His last breath the Earth shook, and as suddenly as the silence was broken it returned.
P. The soldiers are busy finishing their job and two well dressed men come to get the body of Jesus, and now we are left there at the Cross with the relics of the death of Jesus.
1. Three nails, three cross shaped shadows, a crown of thorns with the tips stained with blood, and a bizarre thought, this is not the blood of a man. This is the blood of God!
2. It’s almost unbelievable that nails held your sin to a Cross, and the prayer of a thief was answered as the last bit of life was drained from his body.
3. But that is not as unbelievable that as the fact that another thief who had the chance to offer his own prayer didn’t!
II. The hill called Calvary is full of Irony and Absurdity.
A. If we had been the ones that had written out the story, and decided how it all would happen we would have done it differently.
B. If we had been told to decide how God would redeem the world we would have probably written about white horses and swords, and satan flat on his back while God sat on his throne.
C. And we surely wouldn’t have written about God on a Cross.
1. We wouldn’t have written about God with split lips, and a bloody face.
2. We wouldn’t have written about a sponge thrust in his face and a spear thrust in his side, and dice rolled at his feet.
D. But we weren’t asked to write the story, and the story was written long before we were even born. These players and these props were picked by God before the beginning of time.
E. We have not been asked to write the story but we have been asked to respond to it.
F. And, for the Cross of Jesus, to be what it was meant to be in your life, you have to bring something to it yourself.
G. We have spent weeks looking at what Jesus brought, scarred hands that offer forgiveness, torn skin that promises acceptance, his wearing our garment of sin so we could have his garment of perfection.
H. We have seen what he brought now the question is what we will bring?
I. We aren’t asked to wear the sign, or carry the cross, feel the nails or wear the spit or feel the crown of thorns, but we are asked to walk the path to the cross and bring something.
J. We don’t have to bring something to the cross and a lot don’t, but I want to urge you today, to bring something to the cross. You can read about the cross, and analyze the cross, you can even pray to it like some do, but it won’t answer your prayers only the one that hung on it can.
K. But, until you leave something at the Cross you really haven’t embraced it the way God intended it to be.
L. Why don’t you bring your bad moments, your bad habits, your selfish moods and lies, or you binges or bigotries.
M. God wants every one of them left at the cross, because he knows that we can’t live with them.
N. Back when I was younger I spent a lot of Sunday afternoons in the Summer playing football with the teenagers in the church I was pastoring at that time.
O. I gained a lot of yards because there was an extra incentive. The field that we played in was full of grassburrs, and if you got tackled you would come up covered with grassburrs, and you would have to pull them out one by painful one.
P. But you had to get them out because, you could not get back into the game without it. I know you are thinking that we were not too bright to want to get back in the game, but we were smarter that most of you, because we were smart enough to know that you had to get rid of those stickers before you tried to get back in the game.
Q. Every mistake in life is like a grassburr. You can’t live life without falling and you can’t fall without getting stuck, and most people seem to think that they can get back into the game without getting rid of the stickers.
R. They don’t want to take the chance that people might know they fell, or they don’t want to admit to themselves that they fell, so they pretend that they never did, and the try to play the game living with the pain of the other falls.
S. They can’t walk well, or sleep well, or rest well, and they are really touchy.
T. Now let me ask you something, does God want us to live like that? No! Listen to what he says.
(Rom 11:27 NIV) And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins."
U. God wants to take away those things that stick with us and cause us pain.
V. God does more than forgive our sins, he takes them way, but for Him to take them away we have to take them to him, we have to admit that they are there, and we have to be more concerned about getting free from the pain than we are about if someone knows that we fell.
W. And, he not only wants the mistakes that we have made he wants the ones that we are making.
X. Are you making some? Are you drinking too much cheating, mismanaging money, or mismanaging your life?
Y. If you are don’t pretend that nothing is wrong. Don’t try to pretend that you didn’t fall. Don’t try to get back in the game and play with pain that you don’t have to have. Go to God, because the first step after a stumble has got to be in the direction of the Cross.
(1 John 1:9 NIV) If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
III. What can you leave at the Cross? Your bad moments and maybe you mad moments would be a good idea too.
A. Have you ever heard the story about the guy who got bit by a dog that had rabies. While he was at the doctors office, after the doctor had told him that he had rabies he started making a list.
B. The doctor told him that he didn’t have to make a will Rabies were curable. The man said I’m not making a will, I ‘m making a list of people I want to bite.
C. We all have a list something like that. You have already learned that friends aren’t always true, and some neighbors aren’t neighborly, some workers don’t work, and some bosses are always bossy, right?
D. You have already learned that a promise made is not necessarily a promise kept, and just because someone fathers a child that doesn’t make them a dad.
E. You have learned that we tend to fight back and bite back, and make list of people that we don’t like.
F. God wants your list. He had Paul write in (1 Cor 13:5 NIV) Love...It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
G. He wants us to leave our lists at the Cross, and I know that’s not easy.
H. We say just look what they did to me, and God says yea, and look what I did for you.
I. Paul says it pretty plain in (Col 3:13 NIV) Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
J. We are commanded, we are not urged, we are not asked, we are commanded to keep no list of wrongs.
K. And, when you think about it do you really want to keep a list, a book of your mistreatments? Do you want to snap and growl your way through life.
L. Let God remove those stickers before they get infected with bitterness.
IV. And while we’re at it we might want to give God our anxious moments too.
A. A man told his psychologist my anxieties are disturbing my dreams. I dream that I am in a pup tent, and then I dream I am in a Teepee. The doctor said I know your problem you are too tense.
B. Booo, But most of us are too tense. So what do we do with our worries? We take them to the Cross. And, I suggest a literal trip. The next time that you are tense, anxious, or torn about something, in your mind see yourself walk up to that Cross and lay that thing down that is worrying you.
C. Spend a few minutes looking at the sign, the nails, the spear, the wooden beams, and the robe laying there, reach down and feel the moisture from the blood and the water that wet the ground under the cross.
D. They represent the FACT that God does not want you to have to live that way.
1. He took the spear and the nails for you.
2. He bled for you.
3. He left the sign for you.
4. Nailed your sins to the Cross, and gave you his robe of righteousness.
E. He did all that for you, and he wants you to take advantage of it. Knowing all that he did for you there don’t you think that he’ll look out for you here?
(Rom 8:32 NIV) He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
F. Do yourself a favor, take you anxious moments, your bad moments, and you mad moments to the Cross, and leave them there.
V. And there is one more. Your final moment.
A. Unless Jesus comes back first you will have one, we all will.
B. We will all have a final moment, a final breath, a final beat of our hearts, and in a split second we will leave what we know and step into what we don’t know, and that bothers us.
C. We don’t like to deal with the unknown, but wouldn’t it make the unknown a little easier to deal with if we could know that Jesus will be waiting for us there.
D. If we can know that the one who loved us enough that he took he nails for us is waiting for us there, won’t it make the unknown easier to deal with.
E. God just wants us to do one thing.
(John 14:1 - 3 NIV) "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God ; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
F. God simply wants the same thing from us that he wanted from Adam and Eve, our trust, and he sent Jesus to die so that we would have something to trust in.
G. So take your bad moments, and sad moments, and anxious moments, and your final moment, and walk to the Cross in your mind and look at the things there that represent how much God loves you and trust him enough to leave those things that you don’t need there with him.
H. And you might have thought by now, "If I take all those moments and leave them at the Cross I will have nothing left but good moments."
I. Well, I’ll be, I guess that might be a little like heaven huh? But, isn’t that what the Cross is all about?
